1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of Electronic Mail Management Systems. Specifically, this invention is a new and useful method, apparatus and computer program product for ignoring junk electronic mail (e-mail) messages.
2. Background
Electronic mail provides a quick and convenient way for computer users to communicate. A message originator initiates this communication by composing a message using a text editing program, providing the e-mail address of the intended recipient, and often by providing an indication of the content (subject matter) of the message by including text in a xe2x80x9csubjectxe2x80x9d field. Then, using well-understood technology, the originator""s mail system sends the message to the recipient""s computer address. The recipient""s computer receives the message and stores it in the recipient""s inbox. The recipient eventually reads, deletes, responds to, or otherwise processes the message stored within the inbox by using any of a number of e-mail programs well known in the art.
Because these messages travel across networks, they generally are constructed according to the Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages specification (RFC822). This specification can be found on the world wide web of the Internet at address xe2x80x9chttp://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc822.htmlxe2x80x9d. Messages formatted to the RFC822 standard have a header portion and an optional body portion that contains the text of the message. The header portion includes a number of fields that address and classify the message. The invention does not require the use of the RFC822 standard. So long as there exists a method to identify essential information the invention is applicable. However, the embodiment described herein uses the RFC822 protocol.
The header portion of a message contains fields composed of character strings comprising a field-name followed by a colon, followed by a field-body terminated by a carriage return/line feed. An example header field is:
xe2x80x9cTo: John Doe less than CR greater than  less than LF greater than xe2x80x9d.
In this example, the  less than CR greater than  represents the ASCII carriage return character and the  less than LF greater than represents the ASCII line feed character. The header field-names are not case sensitive, thus, xe2x80x9cto:xe2x80x9d is equivalent to xe2x80x9cTO: xe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cTo:xe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cto:xe2x80x9d.
The originator, who composes the message, specifies the contents of many header fields. The xe2x80x9cTo: xe2x80x9d field contains the addresses of the intended primary recipients of the message where the address of each recipient is separated by a comma. The xe2x80x9cCc:xe2x80x9d field contains the addresses of the intended secondary recipients of the message (again each address is separated by a comma). The xe2x80x9cSubject:xe2x80x9d field often provides a summary, or indicates the nature, of the message. Although the originator initializes all these fields as desired, the contents of the recipient fields are generally required to be actual Internet addresses. On the other hand, the Subject: field has no specific meaning and may, in fact, be blank or contain a random arrangement of characters. Generally, the Subject: field generally contains a short title representative of the message""s subject matter.
The mail system also adds header fields to the message. One of these fields is the Message-ID: field. The field-body of this field contains a unique machine readable identifier that uniquely identifies each message.
An originator can address a single message to many recipients by separating the addresses of the recipients with a comma. Each of these recipients may respond to the original message by sending a reply message to the same list of recipients (plus the originator). Some of these recipients may then respond to the first reply message. These reply messages are termed follow-up messages to the original message. This process facilitates a vigorous discussion between the originator and the recipients, as well as between the recipients.
As mentioned above, most Electronic Mail programs provide a mechanism so that the recipient can reply to a message. This mechanism generally allows the reply to be sent to the original originator, or to be sent to all of the original recipients in addition to the originator. These e-mail programs use the same xe2x80x9cSubject:xe2x80x9d field-body text as the original message but generally prepend an indicator to the field-text portion of the subject header to indicate that the reply message relates to the subject matter of the original message. That is, that the reply message is continuing the discussion initiated by the original message. The modification to the subject field is generally made by prepending one of the following strings to the subject field-body text: xe2x80x9cRe:xe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cRE:xe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cre:xe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cReN:xe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9creN:xe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cREN:xe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cRe [N] :xe2x80x9d,xe2x80x9cre [N]:xe2x80x9d, or xe2x80x9cRE [N]:xe2x80x9d (where xe2x80x9cNxe2x80x9d is an integer). Thus, the recipients of the reply to the original message can determine that the reply is directed to an ongoing discussion and not initiating a new discussion. Hence, a discussion evolves between the recipients relating to the subject matter of the original message.
This process has expanded into the distribution list concept. A distribution list is generally directed towards a particular subject matter (for example, the copyright list xe2x80x9ccni-copyright@cni.orgxe2x80x9d). Thus, those who are interested in the subject matter xe2x80x9csubscribexe2x80x9d to the distribution list. Subscribers have their e-mail address added to the list of recipients for messages sent from the distribution list. Thus, when the distribution list receives a message it redistributes the message, using normal e-mail, to all the subscribers (recipients) of the distribution list. Distribution lists can be managed directly by some human agency, a program (a listserver), or a combination of both. Some distribution lists are moderated in the sense that a human reviews all incoming messages prior to reposting them through the distribution list. Other distribution lists are not moderated. Thus, messages received by the unmoderated group are automatically redistributed to the rest of the subscribers without human review.
With e-mail discussions, particularly with unmoderated discussion lists, a recipient often loses interest in following a discussion about any given subject matter. When that recipient would rather not read the message it becomes electronic junk mailxe2x80x94a waste of time to open, read, and discard. Because it takes the recipient""s time to discard these messages, they rapidly accumulate and soon dominate the recipient""s inbox. Another source of junk e-mail is from people who send messages to a large number of recipients most of whom have no interest in the message. Yet another source of junk e-mail is from people who spam the net. Spamming occurs when someone sends a message to several distribution lists dedicated to topics that are unrelated or only marginally related to the content of the spamming message. Recipients may even receive multiple copies of the spamming message from different distribution lists. Spam has been described as xe2x80x9can obnoxious, netwide epidemicxe2x80x9d and has even engendered a lawsuit by an annoyed recipient (see xe2x80x9chttp://techweb.cmp.com/net/issues/036issue/036law.htmxe2x80x9d). Still another source of junk mail results from recipients of distribution list messages who mistakenly send subscribe and unsubscribe messages directly to the distribution list instead of to the listserver serving the distribution list. This results in the subscribe and unsubscribe messages being redistributed to the recipients of the distribution list instead of being processed by the listserver.
Everyone desires to be rid of junk e-mail, but not everyone agrees on what junk e-mail is. A facility that removes junk e-mail is subject to being abused by those who desire to censor e-mail or desire to maliciously delete e-mail addressed to another. One prior art method used to limit the transmission of junk e-mail is to use a moderated distribution list as described above. However, this approach delays the distribution of e-mail because a human moderator must review each message before the message is distributed to the list. Further, the moderator has the sole discretion to decide which messages are distributed. Thus, discussions on topics disagreeable to the moderator are difficult because the moderator may censor the discussion and thereby limit the effectiveness of the discussion group. Finally, spammers may simply send spam messages to a multiple set of individual e-mail addresses instead of sending these messages through distribution lists.
The prior art partially addresses this problem by enabling the creation of recipient modifiable xe2x80x9cfiltersxe2x80x9d that ignore e-mail messages that the recipient does not desire to view. These filters examine each message for some condition. If the filter detects that condition in the message, the filter performs an operation on that message. These filter operations generally include a delete operation. Thus, uninteresting messages can be removed from incoming e-mail without intervention by the recipient. However, messages that have already been stored in the recipient""s inbox are generally not accessible to a filter. Thus, most filters will not remove unread messages in the recipient""s inbox. Further, even those filters that can remove messages from the recipient""s inbox require the recipient to execute some additional command to do so. Another problem with filters is that they are notoriously difficult for non-programmers to use and often require significant debugging. Additionally, at some later date the recipient must remember to deactivate the filter to be able to read future interesting discussions that nevertheless satisfy the conditions being filtered. Finally, one problem with the filter approach to removing junk e-mail is that junk e-mail usually does not have a consistent characteristic that the filter can detect. This means that the recipient must constantly create new narrowly tailored filters specialized for each type of junk e-mail message. However, even with narrowly tailored filters some messages that the recipient would not consider to be junk e-mail may fall within the parameters of the filter and be deleted.
The invention addresses these problems and simplifies a recipient""s use of e-mail by providing a mechanism for identifying and automatically deleting most junk e-mail messages without the disadvantages and problems of the prior art solutions.
The present invention overcomes the disadvantages of the above described systems and provides an economical, apparatus, method, system and computer program product for providing enhanced facilities to users of electronic mail systems. One aspect of the invention is a computer controlled method for processing electronic mail. The method presents an e-mail message to a trusted recipient who classifies the e-mail message. If the trusted recipient classifies the e-mail message as being junk e-mail, the method prevents the presentation of the junk e-mail to other trusted users who have not yet viewed the junk e-mail.
In another aspect of the invention, an electronic mail system is disclosed using a central processing unit (CPU), a memory, and a filestorage mechanism to provide a presentation mechanism that presents an electronic mail message to a trusted recipient belonging to a group of trusted recipients. This aspect of the invention also provides a classification mechanism that allows the trusted recipient to classify the e-mail message. Further, this aspect of the invention discloses a presentation prevention mechanism that operates to prevent the e-mail message from being presented to one or more trusted recipients.
In yet another aspect of the invention an electronic mail apparatus is disclosed using a central processing unit (CPU), a memory, and a filestorage mechanism for preventing the presentation of an e-mail message to one or more trusted recipients.
Another aspect of the invention is a computer program product having computer readable code embodied in a computer usable storage medium. This code, when executed on a computer, processes electronic mail messages and causes the computer to effect a presentation prevention mechanism that prevents presentation of an e-mail message to one or more trusted recipients.
Another aspect of the invention is a trusted group server apparatus that uses a central processing unit (CPU), a memory, and a filestorage mechanism. This apparatus includes a notification reception mechanism that receives junk mail report messages and a warning mechanism that sends junk mail warning messages to the trusted recipients served by the trusted group server apparatus.
Yet a final aspect of the invention is a computer program product having computer readable code embodied in a computer usable storage medium. This code, when executed on a computer, causes a computer to provide services to a trusted recipient. These code devices are configured cause a computer to receive junk mail report messages and to send junk mail warning messages to a trusted group recipient.